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editor's note

Tanya Chaitanya (Editor Femina India)

For every doubting Thomas who tells you women can’t scale mountains, wrestle in the ring, endure physical hardship, your comeback should be a simple hashtag:#StandStrong.
There’s no bigger retaliation than success, they say. So show your calibre to these detractors or anybody who believes that we, as women, lack the potential to be physically as fit as men by being just that. Not to say that it will be an easy process.
The conditioning that we are not at par physically starts early. From the time we are offered a hand to bring down the cookie jar to when we are told not to lift too heavy a weight; when the sports selectors in schools bypass promising girl children or when the male friends refuse to count us in in any serious hiking plans—that feeling of being physically less is ingrained right from the beginning.
So how is it that we witness sportswomen like Mary Kom packing a punch in the arena or a badminton champ like PV Sindhu physically pushing herself to the limits? Or the fact that celebs like Jacqueline Fernandez, Taapsee Pannu, Katrina Kaif swear by their fitness routine and are known to train for longer hours than their male counterparts?
Then again look beyond these superwomen. Look around you. There are regular women storming into male bastions, physically-challenging professions and pursuits, and coming out triumphant. This new-found confidence comes with taking care of yourself, being cognizant of the fact that our body needs to be given TLC, from the right diet and nutrition to exercise and care to help us stand strong.
This is when I raise a toast: Here’s to strong women. May we know them, may we be them, may we raise them!

Atita Verghese: Skateboarding her way to glory

Atita Verghese discovered skateboarding by chance on a gap year between school and college when a friend lent her a skateboard to take for a spin. Even today, skateboarding is not a very popular sport in India and at the time, it was a complete novelty. She had a brief, liberating ride and it was enough to convince Verghese that she was onto something special.

Her first brush with skateboarding“When I was 19, a friend of mine, who is one of the founders of HolyStoked Collective, a group of skateboarders in Bangalore, took me to the Play Arena park—before that I had no idea we had a skate park in Bangalore. I tried skateboarding a few times and I had to keep going back for more.” It wasn’t hard for Verghese, who was naturally athletic, to pick up the sport.

With practice and passion came expertise, and it wasn’t long before Verghese was accepted as a member of the HolyStoked Collective. “I started skating with them and later started teaching classes to underprivileged kids in Bangalore. I also did events with them to get more people interested in the sport.” The 24-year-old Verghese, along with the collective, helped build more skate parks in India in places like Visakhapatnam and Janwaar, Madhya Pradesh.

Starting her own ventureIn 2015, Verghese started her own venture, Girl Skate India (GSI) in Bangalore, a community of skaters from nine different countries who are popularising the sport in India and encouraging more girls to get on board. “Even though the skateboarding scene was rapidly growing, there weren’t enough women in it. And I wanted to have more girls to skate with!” They organised skate workshops with kids from the Kovalam Skate Club, an education centre in Kerala that uses skateboarding to make drop-outs and destitute kids get back into school. “We also conducted skate yoga workshops and free skateboarding classes in Bangalore, and built a ramp from scratch in the city at a skating venue called The Cave Skate Park.”

An all girls skating tourIn December 2015, Verghese and GSI launched the first-ever all-female skating and ramp building tour. “The tour kicked off in Kovalam, Kerala, where we worked with SISP—an NGO where the Kovalam Skate Club is located—to conduct a workshop with the girls. It was all documented in a short film on our website, girlskateindia.com,” she says.

The self-funded tour took 12 women skateboarders to Kovalam, Bangalore, Goa and Hampi to empower and inform underprivileged girls. “It was quite a magical little coming together of creative energy,” says Verghese.

Since the success of the tour, Verghese has been working to make the collective even bigger. “I would really like to see a space where our youth can express themselves freely and pursue passions outside formal education.”